Creating Knowledge Through Hands-on Experience

The re-worked KIN 511 will require students to apply the rote muscular anatomy knowledge to hands on skills of palpation and identification on a living person as well as acquisition of new evaluative skills that they will be expected to utilize in a clinical setting by the end of the course.  The course design pitfall “#4: Expect your students to consume knowledge rather than create it” helped me shift my thought process in a necessary way.  How can I build applicable course activities to engage students, both online and in person, to create their knowledge for themselves rather than consume it for regurgitation for someone else?

For this course I plan to have students heavily engaged in online content for the first two weeks of the 4 week summer term.  The goal of these first two weeks is to get all students on the same level with the anatomical structures and functions via assignments and online activities.  In the final two weeks of the term we will engage in immersive hands on activities to apply the information they engaged with online.  With my clinical background, creation of hands-on learning comes much more naturally in the face-to-face setting.

I foresee some students experiencing more difficulty with creating knowledge based on their clinical background prior to entering the MATRN program.  Students who struggle in the application portion of the course will have resources to expand their hands-on practice time in the form of open lab, guided practice with clinical preceptors and take home palpation modules to work through on their own.